Welcome to Tuesday Muse, the successor to A Poem for Tuesday. Think of it as "A (Poem + Painting + Spoken Word + Music + Performance Art + Sculpture + Noise + Mash + Animation + Story + Photography + Public Art + Multimedia + Theater Performance + Anything Art) for Tuesday." Today: Playing for Change, whose muse builds a song by having a crew travel the world to record one stellar musician after another, sometimes in remote outdoor locations, in such a way that each musician can hear and play to what the others have done while adding his or her own piece. It's like building a choir a person at a time while leapfrogging assumed barriers of geography, genre, and culture. It's also grown to be about more than songs: PFC is now building music schools in impoverished locales and is sponsoring social-change concerts. Founder Mark Johnson explains here how PFC's recording process works. And here is their version of Gimme Shelter:

Funny: even before Sean Paul Kelley announced that he needed to do something new, I felt I needed to do something different with A Poem for Tuesday. It's been working at me for a while now, and I'm happy to say that next Tuesday I'll do it. A Poem for Tuesday will expand to become Tuesday Muse: a space where I'll feature any and all creativity: visual arts, music, poetry, dance, performance, film, stories, animation, noise, you name it. No limits. If it's art, it will be here. (Feel free to send suggestions my way.) It's a big world. Let's celebrate more of it. To christen the change, here is something by one of the few poets who I've repeated in this space: the late, great Lucille Clifton.

fox

who

can blame her for hunkering

into the doorwells at night,

the only blaze in the dark

the brush of her hopeful tail,

the only starlight

her little bared teeth?

and when she is not satisfied

who can blame her for refusing to leave,

Master Of The Hunt, why am i

not feeding, not being fed?

– Lucille Clifton

In the year in 2000, the Elders of the Hopi Nation were asked for a prophecy, or advice, to mark the beginning of the new millenium.

This prophecy seems like it could be a good contemplation for the people in the Occupy Wall Street movement. And it also seems like a suitable way to mark the passing of the torch by SPK.

There are some slightly different versions of this prophecy on the internet. The version that follows is from the book “Perseverance”, by Margaret Wheatley.

ORAIBI, ARIZONA JUNE 8, 2000
TO MY FELLOW SWIMMERS:

From the Elders of the Hopi Nation ORAIBI, ARIZONA JUNE 8, 2000

Here is one by Emily XYZ:

STRONTIUM: It sits in your bones, it sits in my bones/and it will still be there long after we are gone, strontium/I wonder whose idea it was/Was it the government? Was it the Christian Scientists? Sometimes I wonder about them, strontium/Don't worry on getting drafted, don't worry on world war three/Everything that you're afraid of/is inside you already.

– Emily XYZ

Elizabeth Brooke Hazen says:

Why I Love Zombie Woman #6

Because she's stuck with stiff and stupid legs,
and decomposing skin, but perseveres;
because she sees without eyeballs, she hears
with oozing ears; because her organs, like eggs
dropped from their carton, hit the path with splats,
but still she trudges on; because her need
is clear, uncomplicated: she must feed;
because she barely notices the rats
that gnaw her ankles; because she doesn't stop,
even after the hatchet hacks clean through
her reaching arm; because she will pursue
her prey till they have nothing left to chop.
    Because when she lies in piles, inside out,
    she will not know regret, or shame, or doubt.

– Elizabeth Brooke Hazen, from Gargoyle Magazine #51

Here is one by Sarah Browning, written years before the fall of Tiger Woods, the Great Recession, and the alleged end of the Iraq War.

Falling for Tiger Woods in a St. Louis Airport Bar

Down we went, into flat America
like the golf ball on TV. Not much
hope, coming in, but now I've met
the wet promise of gin in an airport bar.
The white men around me
are talking Cardinals, golf, ketchup
that's clopping the bottle top.
Two guys down from me, Troy is talking
hip replacement, Walter Reed, Iraq,
15 years of service, heading to D.C.
for the hip, the Nationals, maybe
Amtrak to Fenway Park.

Tiger Woods loves me, I decide,
the gin settling in for the second flight.
Still, Tiger misses the shot, Troy leans
on his crutches, calls our flight time
to Tiger, calls to him to satisfy us,
our airport needs, all the America
we'll be leaving behind – the gin,
the white men, my love, Iraq,
Troy's hip, the ball that sits hovering
on the green and will not fall.

– Sarah Browning

Here is a poem by Cornelius Eady that gets to the guts of the matter.

Chittlin's

According to the chef,
At this small restaurant with its hazy view of the Pyrenees
Dizzy ate nine more of these than I will tonight
It must have reminded him of home, I think,
Whenever he passed through to play the summer jazz festival
In a neighboring town,
And assured him that he wasn't.
And when the dish arrives, hot, pungent,
Its workings disguised in mustard,
Cuisine instead of what's left,

I thought of a friend, who might have said,
When my nose reminds my brain of what I swallow,
Now taste where you come from,
And the sight of the man, waving for another plate,
The insulting stuff turned sweet, digestible: jazz.

– Cornelius Eady

Michelangelo wrote an extended sonnet kvetching about what a pain it was to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Yep. Who wouldn't in his position? In his case, he fired off the verse to his friend Giovanni. Seriously. If you don't believe me, ask former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, who wrote in Slate about the artist's pissed-off poem.

When the Author Was Painting the Vault of the Sistine Chapel

I've already grown a goiter from this torture,
hunched up here like a cat in Lombardy
(or anywhere else where the stagnant water's poison).
My stomach's squashed under my chin, my beard's
pointing at heaven, my brain's crushed in a casket,
my breast twists like a harpy's. My brush,
above me all the time, dribbles paint
so my face makes a fine floor for droppings!

My haunches are grinding into my guts,
my poor ass strains to work as a counterweight,
every gesture I make is blind and aimless.
My skin hangs loose below me, my spine's
all knotted from folding over itself.
I'm bent taut as a Syrian bow.

Because I'm stuck like this, my thoughts
are crazy, perfidious tripe:
anyone shoots badly through a crooked blowpipe.

My painting is dead.
Defend it for me, Giovanni, protect my honor.
I am not in the right place—I am not a painter.

Michelangelo, written in 1509 to his friend Giovanni da Pistoia, translated from the Italian by Gail Mazur

Let's revisit song lyrics as poetry. This time it's Lou Reed, painting one of the more painfully cynical romantic scenes you're likely to see.

Romeo Had Juliette

Caught between the twisted stars,
the plotted lines, the faulty map
that brought Columbus to New York

Betwixt between the East and West
he calls on her wearing a leather vest
the earth squeals and shudders to a halt

A diamond crucifix in his ear
is used to help ward off the fear
that he has left his soul in someone's rented car

Inside his pants he hides a mop
to clean the mess that he has dropped
into the life of lithesome Juliette Bell

And Romeo wanted Juliette
And Juliette wanted Romeo

(MORE AFTER THE JUMP)

The Shamali Plains are in central Afghanistan, where your tax dollars prop up a brutally corrupt corporate-friendly regime against brutally regressive resistance. Here is a poem by Susan Terris.

How They Survive

On the broad Shamali Plains,
In the desolate village of Qhurqul

The enemy has cut down grape vines, walnut
And mulberry trees, felled the apple orchards.
And Amir? He has returned to a well
Dammed with rocks,
A house turned to rubble by mortar fire.
What has he salvaged? A tin box, a chair,
A tub without a bottom.
Now, in the char of the old kitchen,
He and his family camp out.
They have no grapes, no nuts or bright berries,
No apples to eat, but they do keep warm
Slowly burning what they have lost.

– Susan Terris

I don't know why I like this poem. But I do.

something that you should know

my secrets
appear on your window
when you fog the division
with your own warm breath;
you lost yourself in their presence,
in your search for
cheekbones on sunflowers
and night blades
by the moon's chin.
impatience hummed your fears,
and the absence you cherished
quickly dissolved.
the only way to know is
to
ask
nothing.

– Cecilia Borromeo

I don't often do long poems here. But here is one by Luis J. Rodriguez.

The Concrete River

We sink into the dust,
Baba and me,
Beneath brush of prickly leaves;
Ivy strangling trees--singing
Our last rites of locura.
Homeboys. Worshipping God-fumes
Out of spray cans.

Our backs press up against
A corrugated steel fence
Along the dried banks
Of a concrete river.
Spray-painted outpourings
On walls offer a chaos
Of color for the eyes.

Home for now. Hidden in weeds.
Furnished with stained mattresses
And plastic milk crates.
Wood planks thrust into
         thick branches
         serve as roof.
The door is a torn cloth curtain
         (knock before entering).
Home for now, sandwiched
In between the maddening days.

We aim spray into paper bags.
Suckle them. Take deep breaths.
An echo of steel-sounds grates the sky.
Home for now. Along an urban-spawned
Stream of muck, we gargle in
The technicolor synthesized madness.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP

Sometimes you have to look at things this way. Here is one by Keith Althaus.

Little Elegy

Even the stars wear out.
Their great engines fail.
The unapproachable roar
and heat subside
as wind blows across
the hole in the sky
with a noise like a boy
playing on an empty bottle.
It is an owl, or a train.
You hear it underground.
Where the worms live
that can be cut in half
and start over
again and again.
Their heart must be
in two places at once, like mine.

– Keith Althaus

Wow, do I like this poem by Margaret Holley:

The Dancer

Say you came once as a dragonfly,
a one-inch serpent-twig, the suspended "I,"

its double pair of barely air-dried wings
sewing one moment to the next. Quietness

makes it clear: it's not an exact equation,
the weight of clouds and the dusty mirror

of the pond. The nymphs are always hatching.
Something is always disturbing the surface,

changing the leeway: future perfect, past
imperfect, this green ocean of air in between.

– Margaret Holley, from Kore in Bloom

Here is one by G.E. Patterson.

Cinderella

Seems like some people never get the blues
without Billie Holiday turned up loud
quart of chivas at their feet – maybe Dewars
cigar  cigarette smoke  cat piss  dark rooms
their man two or three years late coming home
their woman packed up   out of town two days
rotten job no job  either way  no money
some people got to go to school to feel
what I feel every morning every night
I wake up wondering what new shit's coming
to make me wish I had yesterday back
I go to bed wondering how long I'll sleep
before something wakes me – siren, bad dream
I hear them  singing to themselves all night
their lives just turning bad  mine been that way

– G.E. Patterson, from his book Tug

This one is by Frank O'Hara. (My thanks to Linda.)

Why I Am Not a Painter

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

– Frank O'Hara

Here is one by Toi Derricotte:

Boy at the Paterson Falls

I am thinking of that boy who bragged about the day he threw
   a dog over and watched it struggle to stay upright all
   the way down.
I am thinking of that rotting carcass on the rocks,
and the child with such power he could call to a helpless
   thing as if he were its friend, capture it, and think of
   the cruelest punishment.
It must have answered some need, some silent screaming in a
   closet, a motherless call when night came crashing;
it must have satisfied, for he seemed joyful, proud, as if he
   had once made a great creation out of murder.
That body on the rocks, its sharp angles, slowly took the shape of
   what was underneath, bones pounded, until it lay on the bottom
   like a scraggly rug.
Nothing remains but memory—and the suffering of those who
   would walk into the soft hands of a killer for a crumb of bread.

– Toi Derricotte

In the less is more department, here is one by Yosa Buson (1716-1783).

Having Reddened the Plum Blossoms

Having reddened the plum blossoms

the sunset attacks

oaks and pines.

– Yosa Buson, translated by Robert Hass

Not to worry: all of this ends with a poem.

But first, here is an excerpt from a K-12 website's suggested materials for elementary school teachers to use for Columbus Day:

On August 2, 1492 the voyage began. The trip was not easy. Columbus's crew was afraid of the unknown seas. They believed monsters were in the waters. Some thought the world was flat, and that their ships were sailing too far from the shore and would fall off the end of the earth. On September 1, 1492 Columbus's ships passed an active volcano on the island of Teneriffe. They also reported seeing a bolt of fire fall from the heavens into the sea. The men took these as bad signs.

(MORE AFTER THE JUMP)

Here is one by Gwendolyn Brooks. It was published in 1960. [N.B. 7pm 10/4: I've corrected this from my erroneously attributing it to June Jordan, who wrote many great poems but not this one. I'm sorry about that.]

The Pool Players.
Seven at the Golden Shovel.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

– Gwendolyn Brooks

Kay Ryan is a former national Poet Laureate who has had a pretty good year. In April she won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Last week she was announced as one of 22 winners of $500,000 MacArthur Foundation "genius grants" for 2011. Like a lot of us who know nothing about her work, I dug backward for a look. Among the poems I found is this one, published in 2005:

Home to Roost

The chickens
are circling and
blotting out the
day. The sun is
bright, but the
chickens are in
the way. Yes,
the sky is dark
with chickens,
dense with them.
They turn and
then they turn
again. These
are the chickens
you let loose
one at a time
and small —
various breeds.
Now they have
come home
to roost—all
the same kind
at the same speed.

– Kay Ryan

Here is one from Hal Sirowitz's "Mother Said" series:

Deformed Finger

Don't stick your finger in the ketchup bottle,
Mother said. It might get stuck, and
then you'll have to wait for your father
to get home and pull it out. He
won't be happy to find a dirty fingernail
squirming in the ketchup that he's going to use
on his hamburger. He'll yank it out so hard
that for the rest of your life you won't
be able to wear a ring on that finger.
And if you ever get a girlfriend, and
you hold hands, she's bound to ask you
why one of your fingers is deformed
and you'll be obligated to tell her how
you didn't listen to your mother, and
insisted on playing with a ketchup bottle,
and she'll get to thinking, He probably won't
listen to me either, and she'll push your hand away.

– Hal Sirowitz

It's football season. This week on this side of the Atlantic, in my town of Baltimore, Maryland, that means high-fives and local victory-grunts over our corporate "team," the Ravens, having just defeated the arch-rival Pittsburgh Steelers. But here is a poem by William Heyen.

Rood

At least the hooligans' fire in the stands
melted snow which diluted the blood
seeping from Seamus's scalp where he lay
like a goalie who'd brained himself trying to save
a penalty kick that kissed the net
that shook slightly when his head struck the post.
At least the hooligans' fire melted snow
which diluted beer that mixed with blood
that seeped into concrete & wood on that day
the living remember scar by scar, & the dead
in their clubhouse who were trampled & burned
now sing like the sacking of Troy that redeemed
their sacred honor, & likewise their team's.

– William Heyen

I hope you had a happy Labor Day. Here is a poem by Cheryl Savageau.

Department of Labor Haiku

   – for Martin Espada

In the winter snow
the kitchens fill up with steam
and men out of work

– Cheryl Savageau

Great work and admirable character often don't go together. By many accounts, Miles Davis was a jerk even as his bands created a de facto university for soon-to-be-great musicians. Pablo Picasso was a philanderer. Elia Kazan ratted out his alleged former communist colleagues in the McCarthy Hearings. And the poet I feature today, Gertrude Stein, despicably curried favor with the Nazis. I don't buy the effete claim that "only the work matters," as if the work doesn't bear the marks of its creator. Nor am I willing to necessarily banish an artist who behaves abominably, although when I learned that Eric Clapton drunkenly ranted to an audience to "keep Britain white" it, uh, altered my opinion of the man. In Stein's case, it sounds to me as if she felt selfishly entitled, as a celebrated intellectual, to do whatever she damn well pleased. I personally find some of her poems to be self-indulgent muck. But this one I like:

A Long Dress

What is the current that makes machinery, that makes it crackle, what is the current that presents a long line and a necessary waist. What is this current. What is the wind, what is it.

Where is the serene length, it is there and a dark place is not a dark place, only a white and red are black, only a yellow and green are blue, a pink is scarlet, a bow is every color. A line distinguishes it. A line just distinguishes it.

– Gertrude Stein